Conspiracy theory nutjobs will tell you that he was best friends with Howard Webb or whatever, but I personally think that his presence and personality was the fear factor. He'd been around for so long, stayed so consistent while everything and everyone else had changed so much. A crap analogy I'd make would be that of a young hotshot Hollywood CEO having to work with Spielberg on a new film: Even if this kid is, in theory, supposed to be higher up on the food chain, he can't help but admire and respect someone who's been there and done it in his arena so many times. Players, managers, press (the ones who refused to were banned) and possibly even referees (albeit subconsciously) took the Fergie mythos seriously. I mean, he was sir Alex ffs. And I think that had a tangible effect on results.

Exactly. And even though we were underrated, often derided in the press, we still had so much fear factor on the day. The Fergie godfather thing is cliché at this point but there definitely was something to how he pulled strings behind the scenes (most of it just clever politicking) and made the opposition feel like fate was conspiring against them from kickoff. They'd piss themselves when they saw the badge.

06/07 stands out most in memory to me. Really felt like that was when Ronaldo announced himself to the world. Before that it was a whole lot of promise, but when we won the title that year he was constantly digging us out of games all by himself. 08/09 was similar as well, he was the definition of a juggernaut at that time. The most visceral feeling from that time was just the idea that any time we got a set piece there was like a 90% chance Ronnie would convert. Penalties, free kicks, corners. Conceding a foul in their half was pretty much conceding defeat for the opposition.

I felt like every one of those seasons there wasn't the sense that we were destined to win the trophy, but we'd at least give it a really good go. You were at least guaranteed that under Fergie. And when we did win we relished it, but it wasn't a surprise either. Chelsea under Mourinho's tutelage were obviously most formidable in 06/07 because of their ability to grind out results, and the toughest thing about 02/03 was easily Henry at Arsenal. He was so damn frightening at that time, similar to what Ronaldo would later become.

Oh and 12/13 was simply all about RVP. Wouldn't have won the league without him that season.

What's pathetic is someone who can't handle the fact that someone else's opinion differs from theirs. Post match ratings are quite possibly the most subjective thing on here.

It's easy to think that Fellaini did more because he was on the pitch longer, but you have to scale performances when doing ratings imo (unless of course it's something like Smalling the other week when he barely got a touch, those are just N/A). And in this particular instance, I based my ratings on what effect they had to the overall team performance as substitutes moreso than individual statistics. I felt Mata calmed it down whereas, besides his decent chest and shot, Fellaini broke up the flow too much with his positioning. But hey, extremely sorry for disagreeing with how you lot feel and rating one player a point higher than another.

Okay so then maybe it's a BMW that requires a few more parts to be complete but the resale potential still dwarfs that of the old camry. (And I get that some people really love their old camry's, they're super reliable. Hence why I went with that specific analogy :D. But I personally think it's nuts.)

He's become more like that in recent games, previously he was making runs and not getting found (does no one remember that gif of rooney looking at him and turning and passing back that was very popular on here?)... it's definitely frustration on his part that makes him drop in deep, RVP had been doing it like crazy too. All we can hope for is that he learns from it when they play the tape back at Carrington.

Brilliant, thanks for posting this! He looks quite rusty (especially defensively), which is to be expected, but there's definitely something there. Seems to be intelligent with his movement going forward, but the thing that impresses me the most is his gait... seems to lumber after the ball with a really effective, powerful stride. Could be a fierce fucker to play against as he gets older and stronger.

I guess if I think about it more in-depth it makes sense that he could fit into the Richard Dunn category of not exactly being into the humor per say but being clever enough to adapt to it. Gotta hand it to him if you're right then, when he was getting all excited about the lifetime achievement award I totally bought it.

I'm very mixed on selling Valencia. Overall I've been pretty disappointed that he keeps going backwards instead of forwards, but how often are you going to get a versatile player who captains his country and is willing to work hard for the team in whatever role that's asked of him? Moyes and LVG both saw something in him that's worth holding on to.